


Special Treatment

by PresquePommes



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Introspection, M/M, big families, i'm not sure what to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:13:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has a good relationship with the citizens of Night Vale. Somebody else might find the attention uncomfortable, but Carlos, well, he's surprisingly used to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special Treatment

**Author's Note:**

> Just a thing I wrote on the fly. My apologies if anything re: Spanish terms of endearment and family relationships is weird, please let me know!

If Carlos had been a sociologist, a psychologist, or indeed anything but the very particular kind of scientist that he was- which was, according to Cecil, “the kind of scientist who wears a lab coat and has a lab full of science stuff, oh, you know, a _real_ scientist,” because anyone who claimed to be a scientist who didn’t wear a lab coat was clearly a liar, just like those awful StrexCorp people who didn’t even realize that scientists wore _white_ lab coats and not _black_ suits, _se-eriously_ Carlos, I guess this proves, once _again_ , that we just can’t expect too much from Desert Bluffs, _ugh_ \- he would have found his own relationship with Night Vale absolutely fascinating.

That was not to say that he didn’t, of course. It was simply that he wasn’t qualified to fully appreciate just how interesting it all was.

Carlos could only speculate about the why of the thing.

Carlos could think about his family, expansive and abrupt, a seemingly endless number of _tíos_ and _tías_ , all of them with children many years older than him and one or another never too far away to dote on a little boy whose existence took his aging parents by surprise. A happy accident, twelve years younger than his closest sibling, and- much to his sister’s irritation- a far prettier child.

He could think about afternoons and evenings with his _abuelita_ , who would murmur that he was so blessed to have his father’s soft hair, _ah, mi hermoso niño,_ so lucky to have his mother’s delicate skin, and such good teeth, you’ll make girls cry someday, _Carlitos_ , _remember to be kind to them_.

He could think about the fact that he had a last name, a name he shared- or had shared once, given that he wasn’t always certain that Night Vale was synced to the movements of the rest of the world in a way that allowed for such continuities- with many amongst his multitude of relatives, but here, he was “Carlos the Scientist” in the same way that John Peters was “John Peters, you know, the farmer” and Josie- whose last name he did not know for presumably the exact same reason no one knew his- was “Old Woman Josie, out near the car lot” or simply “Old Woman Josie”.

Occasionally, he was just Carlos, which he preferred.

More often, he was “Carlos, perfect Carlos” or “Carlos, perfect and beautiful” or some other combination of adoring adjectives used in conjunction with his name. It had been a little disconcerting, at first. Unexpectedly hearing one’s name on the radio usually is.

In the beginning, his team had alternated between cringing and laughing every time Cecil spoke about him. The general consensus was that Cecil “seemed nice,” but the obvious intensity of his puppyish infatuation was “kind of embarrassing” to those listening.

When the radio had been on and they’d looked at him for a reaction, Carlos felt as though he had to produce some semblance of mortification, but the fact of the matter was that even after all of these years, he was used to it. Amongst his kin, he was, right up until his sisters and cousins had all had little boys and girls of their own, the baby of his generation, and he had never stopped being his mother’s _muñequito_ , her _lindo bebé_.

In some truly bizarre way, the voice that cooed over him on the radio made Night Vale feel like a more familiar and welcome place.

The strangers who snuck a hand out to briefly stroke his hair in the supermarket didn’t alarm or distract him from his tests on the cantaloupes. He’d never really thought much about the way his new neighbours would lay their hands on his arms or shoulders companionably, nor had he wondered about how close to him they tended to stand.

When his fellow scientists had expressed that it wasn’t precisely _normal_ , given the circumstances, he’d been a little concerned- the citizens of Night Vale were strange people, after all.

Strange, but harmless. That it was the visible oddities amidst the already odd population that posed any threat to the rest of them was something that became clearer by the day.

What was, perhaps, Carlos’ only true moment of embarrassment was the one in which he came to the realization that his sisters had been right, that they had always been right: he’d been absolutely _spoiled_ as a child.

Even when he was very young, he’d been a boy with a fairly serious personality, and because he’d studied dutifully without needing to be reminded, the lack of reminders had never come as a surprise to him.

When he was a teenager, he was well-behaved on account of his own interests, rather than any clear source of discipline- he was, strictly speaking, much more interested in science than girls.

Or boys, for that matter.

He’d never had a curfew, but it had never occurred to him that he should, because he’d never stayed out late enough to break one.

When he’d graduated, packed his things in preparation for the college in another city that would give him a scholarship and, eventually, his first degree, his mother had wailed, but it had seemed to him that this was something all mothers did.

If she had visited more often, mailed him more pocket money than was strictly usual, or sent him a heavier box of lovingly packed home cooking in red-topped Tupperware containers than his peers would receive, his grateful roommates were too busy eating his mother’s cooking to tell him so.

He’d been spoiled, and when he was left on his own, he’d been self-sufficient enough to register it only as a mild and slightly disheartening inconvenience. He wasn’t a very good cook, and sometimes he’d be consumed with homesickness halfway through a bite of some bland and low-effort meal, but he’d always thought that was normal.

He had devoted a great many years to his schooling, had seen a great many strange things, but he was only realizing the reality of his own childhood now, when his mother and father- already old when he was young- had passed on and his own hair had started to grey at the temples.

He may have never realized it, in other circumstances.

But god, _Cecil_.

He hated to admit it, but he had apparently retained the ability to be spoiled through years of staunch self-denial, and Cecil was absolutely intent on spoiling him.

Cecil, starry-eyed and adoring.

Cecil, who had a smile that could burn down houses and whose outfits made perfect sense through slightly unfocused eyes.

Cecil, who liked to run his fingers through the hair at the nape of Carlos’ neck and creep his fingers down the curve of Carlos’ shoulder in a way that was surprisingly distracting, at least until he was handed a beaker or a Bunsen burner or _anything_ , anything at all, to hold anxiously under the pretense of “helping Carlos do science”.

Carlos had always found science a lot more interesting than people, but Cecil was very interesting.

Carlos was interested in Cecil, and Cecil expressed his reciprocation with an intensity and sincerity that left no room for doubt.

And Cecil wanted to spoil him.

If Carlos had been any of other kind of scientist- one of those “not real” scientists, who didn’t wear a lab coat and didn’t have a lab full of, you know, science stuff- he probably would have recognized that the widespread affection he encountered in Night Vale was affecting him in a way that made it increasingly likely he’d never leave, and that might have alarmed him somewhat.

Mercifully, he was not one of those “not real” scientists.

Like the embarrassing realization he’d spent so long eluding, the knowledge that he was settling in as a permanent resident of the most scientifically interesting community in the United States would elude him until it was entirely too late to bother getting alarmed about.

There was a distinct possibility Cecil knew this.

There was also a distinct possibility Cecil would deny knowing this.

In any case, he wasn’t going to tell.


End file.
